Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 2: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four PeriodsPlotinus
Philosophy
Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 2: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods
Plotinus
Plotinus
28. Does memory belong to the powers by which we feel and know? Is
it by appetite that we remember the things that excite our desires,
and by anger that we remember the things that irritate us? Some will
think so. It is indeed the same faculty which feels pleasure, and
retains remembrance thereof. Thus when, for instance, appetite meets
an object which has already made it experience pleasure, it remembers
this pleasure on seeing this object. Why indeed should appetite not
be similarly moved by some other object? Why is it not moved in some
manner by the same object? Why should we not thus attribute to it the
sensation of things of this kind? Further, why should appetite itself
not be reduced to the power of sensation, and not do likewise for
everything, naming each thing, by what predominates therein?
WHAT APPETITE KEEPS IS AN AFFECTION, BUT NOT A MEMORY.
Must we attribute sensation to each power, but in a different manner?
In this case, for instance, it will be sight, and not appetite, which
will perceive sense-objects; but appetite will be later wakened by
sensation which will be "relayed," (as the Stoics would say); and
though it does not judge of sensation, it will unconsciously feel the
characteristic affection. The same state of affairs will obtain with
anger. It will be sight which will show us an injustice, but it will
be anger which will resent it. Just so, when a shepherd notices a wolf
near his flock, the dog, though he have not yet observed anything, will
be excited by the smell or noise of the wolf. It certainly is appetite
which experiences pleasure, and which keeps a trace of it; but this
trace constitutes an affection or disposition, and not a memory. It
is another power which observes the enjoyment of pleasure, and which
remembers what occurred. This is proved by the fact that memory is
often ignorant of the things in which appetite has participated, though
appetite still preserve traces thereof.
MEMORY DOES NOT BELONG TO THE FACULTY OF SENSATION.
29. Can memory be referred to sensibility? Is the faculty that feels
also the one that remembers? But if the image of the soul (the
irrational soul) possess the memory, as we said above,[147] there
would be in us two faculties that will feel. Further, if sensibility
be capable of grasping notions, it will also have to perceive the
conceptions of discursive reason, or it will be another faculty that
will perceive both.
MEMORY DOES NOT BELONG EXCLUSIVELY TO THE POWER OF PERCEPTION.
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